Major Update about the NOAA 16 Satellite and when problems with it were known see end of the article

Well according to NOAA at least part of Lake Michigan reached that temperature, while other parts had temperatures in excess of 100°, 200°, 300° and 400° F. I saw this a couple of days ago and at first thought it was a hoax being perputrated to try and discredit skeptics, and I still had a nagging suspicion that was the case when I saw the data myself from the Michigan State University's CoastWatch archives (CoastWatch is a co-operative effort between NOAA and MSU). Then yesterday I saw something about all the data for the NOAA-16 Satellite going bye bye (don't remember where exactly)

Well today those two little facts got tied together with a nice little bow and a big attempt by NOAA to first cover up and then whitewash at the minimum gross negligence by the agency.

First to get things in perspective you should read the article from 9 Aug on the website "Climate Change Fraud" (CCF) where the story about the broiling waters of Lake Michigan is found:
In his email the faceless whistleblower explains that what precipitated the scoop was "a rather dubious report in the media that the Great Lakes temperatures have risen 10 to 15 degrees, I found it was downright laughable." (Just a few examples of media hysteria here and here and here and here)

He continues, " Prior to this report I would frequent the 'Coastal Watch' temperature maps for northern Lake Michigan. When this report came out it dawned on me that the numbers didn't match what I had been reading on the Coastal Watch temperature page."

Under a scheme called 'Sea Grant' NOAA collaborates with national universities to compile an official federal temperature record.

In this instance, the partnersip is with Michigan University's 'Coastal Watch.'

Together the two institutions show temperature maps for northern Lake Michigan registering an absurd 430 degrees Fahrenheit -yes, you read it right -that's four hundred and thirty degrees-and this is by no means the highest temperature recorded on the charts.

In the heated debate about Earth's ever-changing climate you certainly don't need to be scientist to figure out that the Great Lakes would have boiled away at a mere 212 degrees so something has seriously gone awry inside this well-funded program.

Now before you go running off to the CoastWatch site to see for
yourself, be advised that it has been taken down but you can still see the map because CCF copied it before NOAA could disappear it and which I reproduce here:

How helpful of them to tell you not to use that map for navigational purposes!

The next part of the story comes about on 11 Aug as CCF breaks the next part and where you see how NOAA operates:

US Government admits satellite temperature readings "degraded."

All data taken offline in shock move. Global warming temperatures may be 10 to 15 degrees too high.

NOAA Whitewash Fails in One Day

NOAA's Chuck Pistis went into whitewash mode on first hearing the story about the worst affected location, Egg Harbor, set by his instruments onto fast boil. On Tuesday morning Pistis loftily declared, "I looked in the archives and I find no image with that time stamp. Also we don't typically post completely cloudy images at all, let alone with temperatures. This image appears to be manufactured for someone's entertainment."

But later that day Chuck and his calamitous colleagues now with egg on their faces, threw in the towel and owned up to the almighty gaffe.

Pistis conceded,

"I just relooked and (sic) the image again AND IT IS in my archive. I do not know why the temperatures were so inaccurate (sic). It appears to have been a malfunction in the satellite. WE have posted thousands if (sic) images since the inauguration of our Coatwatch (sic) service in 1994. I have never seen one like this."

But the spokesman for the Michigan Sea Grant Extension, a 'Coastwatch' partner with NOAA screening the offending data, then confessed that its hastily hidden web pages had, indeed, showed dozens of temperature recordings three or four times higher than seasonal norms. NOAA declined to make any comment as to whether such a glitch could have ramped up the averages for the entire northeastern United States by an average of 10-15 degrees Fahrenheit by going undetected over a longer time scale
that article is here:

NOAA either through incomptence, negligence or malice "cooked" the books (pun intended) on Lake Michigan temperatures, but it has far wider questions and implications. If the NOAA 16 satellite is "degraded" what about the others such as the new NOAA 18 satellite and the older NASA AQUA satellite that is used by UAH and RSS to make the "official" Satellite temperature records, what about NOAA 15 that was used prior to NASA's AQUA by RSS and UAH are they as well ? or will the newer ones be expected to now or not? Is the older one, older then one discussed, not
just "degraded" by orbital decay but also it's sensors and if so when did it start? Was UAH and RSS told if so? How was it handled.

Then you got the questions of how many scientific studies in the Peer Reviewed Litichur might now be nothing more then junk science because of NOAA's mismangement?

Then there is this to consider: The underlying data used by CRU and GISS for their temperature data analysis is almost all based on data collected and managed by NOAA through the NCDC. So now ask yourself this question: If NOAA could screw this up so badly, why should we trust the data that they collect and manage to make these surface temperature records?

What a can of worms this is.

Update: in the comments section over at CCF Lubos Motl (Referance Frame

Blog: pointed out that RSS stopped using the NOAA 16 Satellite in 2007:

# Lubos Motl 2010-08-12 06:19

RSS AMSU has kicked out NOAA-16 in 2007 and I guess that UAH AMSU of Christy and Spencer has done the same thing years ago, too.

This was quickly followed up by another commenter that found this info:

Hi Ian! Thanks Lubos! Here is a site that shows the Remote Sensing

Systems. www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html For this purpose NOAA-16 was removed as of Feb 2007. The reason was

"Data from NOAA-16 is no longer used. The data from this instrument appears to be drifting relative to data from the earlier satellites. The cause of this drift has not yet been determined. The drift is as large as several tenths of a degree K per decade, as large or larger than the expected climate signal".

When you click on the link to the RSS PDF it is there plain as day. This is huge this shows that a KNOWN malfunctioning satellite was still being used by NOAA for research purposes 3 years after the fact. The malfunctionhad to have started to happen before Feb 2007, when exactly the PDF doesn't say, but for RSS to "kick" it from its analysis in that month/year it had to be before. Now the question is when was the drift first noticeable and how long before that did it start to drift?